Knowing that I am a big fan of the writer, a very dear friend of mine gave me a bottle of Dorothy Parker gin. The gin is the sort of alcohol-rich distillation that would make the average sailor wince, but the bottle was wonderful with a picture of Mrs Parker printed on the inside and a little biography on the back:

It was too good to throw away, and so I decided to make it into a lamp. I bought the stick-in bulb fitting and more or less forgot about it, as it took us so long to get through the ‘navy strength’ gin. When the bottle was finally empty, I started to think about a shade. For some reason I decided that a lampshade with some of Mrs Parker’s quotes would be just the thing, so I bought a kit which promised to be very easy to make up…